| Author | Message | | Bolero | |  | | Edithann | | Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:40 pm Post subject: |
| Just follow the green...
you can bet I will not even listen to anything he has to say..and I'm sure lots of others wont either...He's sunk his ship as far as i'm concerned..
TATA | | | | Edithann | | Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:44 pm Post subject: |
| Hillary and Obama just signed on the dotted line...so sell your sons...
That's what AIPAC MONEY demands of all congressmen and all Presidential nominees...The Israeli agenda, no matter what, even genocide is the price AIPAC demands to allow any and all nominees to congress and the Presidency to get AIPAC MONEY.......
Think about it....It should be plastered on all the walls..around the country..Now get out their and do something postive for us...
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk#bad-link
TATA | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:02 am Post subject: |
| From: "Jeffrey Blankfort"
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:29:39 -0800
Subject: [IntelligentMinds] NY Jewish Week: Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past
Larry Cohler is probably the best reporter working for the American Jewish press. In this article he makes reference to Ali Abunimah's criticism of Obama and Obama's past acquaintance with Rashid Khalidi. The former AIPAC honcho, David Rosen, who is under indictment, had him fired from the Washington Jewish Week at the time of the first Gulf War for his coverage of the lobby's support of that war.-JB
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13766&print=yes
(03/09/2007)
Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past
In AIPAC debut, candidate talks tough, walking fine pro-Israel line, but did he drop some hints?
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
Chicago — Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s maiden speech to the pro-Israel lobby last week saw a man described by early supporters as an ardent dove on Israel take flight as a bird of considerably more hawkish mien.
Obama, Illinois’ Democratic junior senator, told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last Friday that he was committed, above all else, to “peace through security” for the Jewish state.
It was a phrase that appeared with variations repeatedly throughout the 30-minute speech, delivered according to many in attendance in a stilted monotone curiously devoid of passion. The more venerable formulation “land for peace” was nowhere to be found. Absent, too, were any references to “settlements,” “occupation” or “territorial compromise” in a talk before a hometown Chicago audience of some 800 sponsored by the pro-Israel lobby’s Midwest region.
While not surprising for a talk before the pro-Israel lobby — where such terms are usually few and far between — some found it surprising for a candidate known not too long ago to some as an unabashed dove.
“He was on the line of Peace Now,” said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, of KAM Isaiah Israel, who lives across the street from Obama in the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, one of the country’s most liberal electoral districts. “He was a moderate peacenik.”
Rabbi Wolf, himself a longtime dove, said that today Obama is “very, very cautious — with AIPAC, excessively cautious.”
Some with dovish views took comfort that at the end of a speech emphasizing the multiple threats facing Israel, Obama spoke of the importance of more active U.S. diplomacy to help Israelis and Palestinians “fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security.” He spoke also of former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s “vision to reach out to longtime enemies” and former leader Ariel Sharon’s “determination to lead Israel out of Gaza.” Israelis were prepared to make “further sacrifices” for peace, he said, without going into further detail.
But Obama, who has rocketed from an obscure state senator to a presidential candidate in little over two years, was until recently known to those involved in Middle East issues in his Hyde Park base on Chicago’s South Side as a man of considerably bolder views.
Despite his strict avoidance of details on what it will take to make progress toward peace, said Rabbi Wolf, “He has a lot to say about that. He’s thought about it.”
Ali Abunimah, a Hyde Park Palestinian-American activist, said that until a few years ago, Obama was “quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel.” It was vivid in his memory, said Abunimah, because “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.”
In 2000, Abunimah recalled, Professor Rashid Khalidi, a leading Palestinian American advocate for a two-state solution and harsh critic of Israel, held a fundraiser in his home for Obama, embarked then on an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the House of Representatives. “He came with his wife,” Abunimah said. “That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. ... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.”
Khalidi, now the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and head of that school’s Middle East Institute, declined to comment on Abunimah’s recollections. But in an interview in Tuesday’s Daily News, he said he hosted the fundraiser because he and Obama were friends while the two lived in Chicago. “He never came to us and said he would do anything in terms of Palestinians,” Khalidi told the paper.
Nevertheless, one Hyde Park source close to Obama, speaking only on condition of anonymity, recalled, “He often expressed general sympathy for the Palestinians — though I don’t recall him ever saying anything publicly.”
Asked to comment on these recollections of his views, a spokesperson for Obama’s campaign did not challenge them, saying only: “The speech is a clear articulation of his positions related to Israel.”
At the AIPAC event, Obama talked in detail about his first trip to Israel, in January of last year. Traveling with several prominent Chicago Jewish activists, Obama saw a house in Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanese border, that had been hit by a Katyusha rocket fired by Hezbollah, the radical Shiite group based in South Lebanon.
“The family who lived [there] was lucky to be alive,” he said. “It is an experience I keep close to my heart ... Too many others have seen the same kind of destruction, have lost their loved ones to suicide bombers and live in fear when the next attack might hit.”
Six months after his visit, Obama noted, “Hezbollah launched 4,000 rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona and kidnapped Israeli service members.” The rockets killed 39 Israeli civilians. An additional 120 Israelis died in combat during the war Israel launched in response to the kidnappings.
As he did last summer, Obama defended Israel’s bombing of targets throughout Lebanon during last summer’s war, bombing widely criticized elsewhere for hitting many civilians and demolishing civilian infrastructure sites. AP estimates 1,035 to 1,191 Lebanese died during the war, of which 250 were Hezbollah fighters.
“When Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself,” said Obama. ... “Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using Lebanon as an outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields, Hezbollah has also engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict, and threatened the fledgling movement for democracy there.”
Obama also warned of the danger Israel faces from Iran’s drive to develop a technical capability that would enable it to develop nuclear arms. Noting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s questioning of the reality of the Holocaust and declared wish for Israel’s elimination, Obama said, “His words contain a chilling echo of some of the world’s most despicable and tragic history.”
At the same time, he de-emphasized a military solution to the problem. “While we should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means,” he said. Obama advocated direct talks and “tough-minded diplomacy” with both Iran and Syria — an approach the Bush administration has rejected. It has recently, however, agreed to attend a meeting about the crisis in Iraq that those two countries will also attend.
Obama said the administration had actually empowered Iran by its invasion of Iraq, noting, “I opposed this war from the beginning.” He advocated a “phased redeployment” of U.S. troops out of Iraq, to be completed by March 2008. A “limited number” of troops should remain to prevent Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, he added.
Obama supported Israel’s refusal to conduct peace talks with the Palestinian Authority government controlled by Hamas, a group responsible for terrorist attacks that denies Israel’s right to exist. A recent unity agreement between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — “a Palestinian leader I believe is committed to peace” — still failed to satisfy the international community’s conditions for ending the Hamas government’s international isolation, he said.
“We should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis,” he said.
But in a seemingly oblique criticism of the administration’s reported opposition to any Israeli response to entreaties by Syria to restart peace negotiations, Obama said, “No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.”
Audience members offered varying views of whether Obama had met the bar for their support.
“I found it a little uninspired,” said Amy Rashkow, an AIPAC member who works for American Friends of Magen David Adom. “He said the right things [but] delivered it without the panache for which he’s known.”
Rashkow and others said they found Obama’s delivery stilted and lacking emotion, even when they agreed with the words he was reading. He sometimes seemed to trip over his text, as if reading it for the first time.
“Look at the comparison for him the next day in Selma,” she said, referring to a speech Obama gave there to mark the 40th anniversary of a famed civil rights protest there. “That was typical Obama.”
But Alan Mesh, another AIPAC member, said that even though “he was not able to articulate passion . . . I was very glad to hear him speak his support for Israel. He talked about his first-hand experience being there. You could tell he understood the problem.”
Campaign spokesperson Jen Saki stressed that Obama was “passionate” about Israel. “Any hint of fatigue was the result of a recent cross-country campaign tour, not a lack of enthhusiasm for the issues important to this community,” she said.
For at least some, the jury appeared to still be out. But Obama has already started to garner pro-Israel financial support. A review of donations to his campaigns for federal office since 2000 by the Center for Responsive Politics showed Obama had received more than $110,000 from pro-Israel sources through last June. Prominent among his backers are the Chicago-based Pritzker family, which owns the Hyatt chain of hotels. Lee Rosenberg, AIPAC’s treasurer, is also a backer, and a member of Obama’s finance committee. | | | | Edithann | | Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:27 pm Post subject: |
| Just heard over the TV this AM that more Americans are aware and following these candidates than ever before....I certainly hope that's true..because Obama seems to be AIPAC's new 'boy toy'..
I'm surprised that Obama has turned out to be nothing more than the usual political Judas....
TATA | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 6:22 am Post subject: March 12 Protest vs. AIPAC Conference, D.C. |
| -----Original Message-----
From: dawnactivists@yahoo.com [mailto:dawnactivists@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 2:51 PM
To: DAWN Activists
Subject: March 12 Protest vs. AIPAC Conference, D.C.
DC ANTIWAR NETWORK
http://DAWNDC.NET
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact 202-635-3739
ACTIVISTS NATIONWIDE SUPPORT
“CONGRESS, STAND UP TO AIPAC” PROTEST
WHEN: March 12, 2007, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
WHERE: American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
Annual Conference Gala Banquet,
DC Convention Center, Mount Vernon Place between 7th and 9th St.
National groups including American Council on Mideast Policy, Global
Exchange, National Association of Muslim American Women and U.S.
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation have joined local Washington, DC
area groups like Code Pink DC, Northern Virginians for Peace and Justice
and DC911truth.org in endorsing the DC Antiwar Network initiated protest
against AIPAC’s annual conference. See full list at DAWNDC.NET. This is
the third year DAWN has initiated such a protest.
Dozens of congressional representatives and executive branch officials
will attend the AIPAC banquet. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will speak at the banquet,
following a forum with Senators Mikulski and Coleman and representativs
Lowey and Ros-Lehtinen. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House
Republican Leader John Boehner will speak at the Tuesday luncheon. Their
talks follow the Sunday night appearance at the AIPAC conference of
Christians United for Israel founder pastor John Hagree who perversely
preaches for an Israel/U.S. attack on Iran to help fulfill Biblical
prophesies that include the destruction of Israel and of all who do not
convert to Christianity, including Jews.
We protest AIPAC, a non-registered agent of the state of Israel, bribing
and bullying American congressional representatives into supporting
Israel, often in ways that ultimately harm Americans. Although AIPAC
does not even represent a majority of American Jews, its massive network
of allied political groups and committed supporters raise money and
apply political muscle with two main goals:
* to perpetuate Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid practices in
the West Bank and Gaza, as well as ongoing discriminatory practices,
land confiscation and ethnic cleansing in both the occupied territories
and Israel.
* to protect Israel’s confiscated Palestinian lands and frustrate their
right to return to them by promoting U.S. dominance in the Middle East,
including through wars on Iraq and Iran.
AIPAC’s destructiveness has been highlighted in the last year by the
writings of respected Professors Walt and Mearsheimer (“The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy”) and former President Jimmy Carter (“Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid”). Dozens of pundits, left, right and mainstream
have echoed their analysis. AIPAC provides ideological propaganda and
political muscle to promote wars that its military contractor allies
need to profit from wars. These special interests undermine American
democracy by making congressional representatives and the president more
responsive to them than to American voters. Elected leaders bowing to
such undue influence undermines the legitimacy of all branches of the
U.S. government.
Those who sign on to this call demand congress and the executive branch
immediately stand up to special interests like AIPAC, end U.S. support
for illegal Israeli policies, end the occupation of Iraq and prevent any
war against Iran. We support just reparations from Israel for the
economic and personal suffering of aggrieved Palestinians and Lebanese
over many decades, as well as reparations for Iraqis harmed by U.S.
military aggression. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
